The Breaking Bad Recap: Good Work

Thinking on your feet — or, in Jesse Pinkman's case, under the train you rob — is what it takes to succeed in the world of digital-age entrepreneurship. The nimble meth manufacturer is the triumphant one. No one would call Pinkman the brains of any operation, but on Sunday night, it was irrefutably our young, recovering addict who figured it all out, in slow close-up, while sipping on a soda straw (and while his partners are out for blood): This particularly crafty narcotics operation can source its vital precursor, methylamine, by sucking it from a freighter, Old West-style.

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And generally, it helps a drug kingpin's chances if his two kids aren't crashing with the new head of the DEA's regional field office. But Walt uses a feigned family crisis in his brother-in-law's office as an opportunity to bug the place. In the scene, Cranston is an actor playing an actor — every time Walt speaks to Hank, he's faking with every syllable. And it works. Within a minute of his sniffling, the Land of Enchantment's most skilled meth chemist is being called a "role model" by another DEA agent. It's like when Reagan called the Contras the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers.

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In other words, work's going well. But even for the mid-level trafficker, home is what matters most. And Walt's got some serious problems here. This episode sees the pretense of the White marriage "rough patch" finally dropped. When Walt and Skyler meet unintentionally at home, it looks for about three seconds like they might reconcile, but no: Skyler turns their whole marriage into an explicit business arrangement. If Walt keeps the kids out of the house (useful when an assassin pops in, she points out), she'll be "whatever kind of partner" Walt wants her to be. Mothers: They know how to protect their offspring.

Meanwhile, everything's leading up to the delightfully anachronistic train robbery, derailing being about the most consistent theme this show has. To save her hide once again, Madrigal employee Lydia, employing the "I'm of More Use to You Alive" trope, has tipped off our crew off about a massive source of Asian methylamine soon to be chugging right through the New Mexico wilderness. To jungle-beat accompaniment, our team feigns a trackside truck breakdown, then drains the goods while the unsuspecting engineers play good Samaritans. Walt says that even once the missing methylamine is noticed, the intended recipients will simply "blame China." I've never seen a more cynical use of what I imagine is one of the go-to American corporate damage-control procedures these days.

And so, with rather impeccable teamwork, the triumvirate has put aside its differences and pulled off this overcomplicated larceny. Except for the spider-collecting kid on a dirt bike who saw the whole thing. And pays for it with his life. In his motivational speech in hell, Walt might say that, in business, one must always be prepared for the unexpected.

--Doug Fine is the author of Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution. A short film about the book is at dougfine.com.